Posts in "Nanny state"

Have you ever thought about why the soft drink industry, even health drinks like Naked Juice or Odwalla, are usually limited to Coca Cola or Pepsi Co.? How about that pesky CRV fee when you buy a soda? Or better yet, soft drinks usually sweetened with corn syrup?

Take a look on why government actually ruins the everyday product we enjoy. John Nese, propreitor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles, explains just how big government ruins soft drinks.

*Plus, Mr. Nese also tells you when to buy Coca Cola sweetened with cane sugar!*

Watch the entire video here:

If you don't have time to watch the whole video, then scroll down to see a few of my favorite quotes:

Now they’re after your vegetable garden—“they,” of course, being your local busybody bureaucrats.

I’m fortunate to live in a fairly garden-friendly city. My neighbors across the street have planted vegetables in most of their front yard. Two houses over there’s a chicken coop topped with solar panels. I’ve put in a few tomato and pepper plants in my tiny garden area. This summer, I’m even working with an urban farm that rents plots all over the city in empty lots and unused fields.

For many Americans, though, gardening ain’t easy.

While vegetable gardens were once actively promoted by the government, in the last few decades they’ve come under fire in many municipalities around the country:

An Orlando family was threatened with fines as high as $500 per day for their front yard vegetable garden—apparently they’d run afoul of a city ordinance requiring people to plant grass, shrubs, and other “traditional landscaping” options on their properties.

In Oak Park, MI, a woman was threatened with 90+ days of jail time for her vegetable garden. After she hired a lawyer, the case was temporarily dismissed, but could be renewed at any time.

In Tulsa, OK, city officials actually destroyed a woman’s garden for the “crime” of having non-tree plants taller than 12 inches in her front yard. She was out of work and had been relying on her garden for food while money was tight.

And then there’s Oakland, CA, where you can grow all the fresh vegetables you want… but if you want to sell any of them, be prepared to buy a pricey permit from the city to do so.

All of these anti-garden laws are born out of two dangerous convictions: First, that the government should be allowed to regulate peaceful, voluntary activities that people do with their own property. Second, that not liking something is ample justification for banning it.

Both of these are dead wrong. While vegetable gardens may not seem like a big deal, allowing this type of government invasion into our personal lives sets a terrible precedent.

This same busybody view of the role of government can be observed in another story getting a lot of attention right now: Virginia’s ban on taxi alternatives Lyft and Uber. If you’re not familiar with this situation, it’s basically the anti-veggie garden mindset on corrupt, corporatist steroids.

It happens often: People get drunk and hook-up. If this is a shock to you, then I doubt you've been to college. However, the days of "getting lucky" are over. Instead of luck, it is considered rape.

Wait. What?

Just recently, after complaints about sexually hostile environments on campuses, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Russlynn Ali sent a nineteen page letter to all schools that receive federal aid outlining how they are supposed to combat the trend of increasing sexual violence at college -- but the data on this "trend" are murky, at best.

Before knowing how to curb the problem, sexual violence needs to be defined. According to Title IX and the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR), "any intentional sexual touching, however slight, with any object, by a man or a woman upon a man or a woman, without consent" is considered rape. That sounds fair after reading it only once. But then consider that consent is defined as active and not passive. Although I understand rape can occur even when a woman/man does not stop a man/woman from progressing sexually, that does not excuse Title IX's overtly vague definition of sexual assault, which -- though it may be meant well -- I'd argue is more about controlling students (the great majority of whom are adults) than protecting women.

The store, called Rawesome, is a volunteer-run dairy store that sells unpasteurized milk to members of their co-operative, provided they sign a release stating that they know that the milk they are purchasing is raw and less safe that pasteurized milk. This should be considered okay under the premise of voluntary association and purchase of goods, but since the market is unlicensed (due to the difficulty of attaining a license, despite the fact that unpasteurized milk is legal), it was shut down.

Raw milk is indeed more hazardous for you than regular milk, but that shouldn't mean that anybody that sells it should be shut down, especially if it's legal under local law. If people willingly consent to buying a product, knowing the risks and hazards of doing so, they should be allowed to without any government agents telling them they can't. That isn't protecting the people, it's just an unnecessary use of force on willing customers of a particular product over bureaucratic malpractices that are redundant and protectionist.

We're familiar here in the United States with government telling us what we can and can't do, even if a majority of the time it seems unjust, but we can at least feel thankful we're not in New Zealand right now, which has just moved to ban parents from giving their children "weird names."

Even though I don't particularly endorse giving kids names like Violence, or naming them after a bus stop, it is still the parents' right to name their child what they wish. Maybe the weird names have special significance to the couple, and want their children to be named what they are. Originally published at www.silverunderground.com.

"Our legislators are not sufficiently apprised of the rightful limits of their powers; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us. No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." – Thomas Jefferson.

The police were quick to the scene saying “we understand you guys are young, but still, you’re breaking the law, and we can’t let you do it anymore. The law is the law, and we have to be consistent with how we enforce the laws.”

It’s clear to anyone that this is a debacle. This travesty raises three major questions. What is the underlying problem? Whose fault is it? What’s the solution?

At some point the American people at large will have to wake up to what the beast in Washington is doing. Laws like the 2007 anti-incandescent light bulb mandate are the kind of things that will probably make that happen. The central planning do gooders and busybodies are attempting to micromanage our lives at such a minute level now, that it's just becoming outright ridiculous. Said Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Friday: "We are taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money."

What he really meant to say is that he thinks he's a lot smarter than us silly consumers and he knows what's best for us. At least one senator is sticking up for personal choice.

AMERICA, sleep well. After a year of surveillance, an undercover operation, and a pre-dawn raid by gun-toting U.S. marshals, the country is safe from an Amish farmer. Dan Allgyer’s crime? Selling unpasteurized milk to a food co-op in the Washington area.

But raw-milk advocates, the feds are learning, do not go down easily. About 400 people protesting Mr. Allgyer’s arrest arrived on Capitol Hill earlier this month with a cow named Morgan, a milking stool, plastic cups, and plenty of passion. Toasting their favorite drink, they pointed out that the signers of the Constitution also drank raw milk and proclaimed “the right to choose what to eat and drink” without government interference.

Perhaps one of the reasons this story has managed to get some media attention (despite the obvious factor of an Amish man being arrested) is the complete absurdity of legislating milk.

One of my best professors in college was a progressive with whom I disagreed on…a lot, to put it mildly. He was right, however, when he said that it was always important to consider what would actually happen given a certain legislative outcome, as opposed to what our worst fears for the situation might be.

In this case, were raw milk totally legal (as it has been for most of our nation’s history), what would actually happen is that raw milk fans would keep drinking it, and everyone else would keep avoiding it. It’s not like there’s a giant Amish conspiracy to somehow slip unpasteurized whipping cream onto the shelves of your local Giant without you noticing.

We've all heard of government wanting to regulate our health care, the Internet, and what kind of light-bulbs we're allowed to put into our homes. As infuriating as those regulations can be, the state of North Carolina may have just one-upped them all: banning rare burgers.

It is the choice of the customer to have his burger done the way he wants it, even raw if he so chooses (steak tartare anybody?). Call this law a war on fast-food or a war on meat, but either way, its nanny-statism gone crazy, and there isn't enough ketchup to make that go down easier.

Yes, it's true. If you want to feed the needy, you need a permit and a professional preparer to do so in the city of Houston. A couple's charity organization, called "Feed a Friend," was basically shut down when the city randomly decided to enforce a law requiring people who want to feed the homeless to have the food prepared in a "certified kitchen" with a "certified food manager."

If you recall back in 2007, there was a story similar to this, except it was in Orlando. These laws are enforced in many different major cities.

Apparently it is believed that these ordinances are designed to "help the public" because poor people are the most vulnerable to food borne illness because they have the least access to healthcare. Unfortunately, such concepts are rooted in pure nanny state nonsense.

To sum up the logic: Yes, apparently the same people who dig through trash and beg for meals care whether or not the fresh home cooked meals prepared by caring individuals are made in a "certified kitchen" under the supervision of a "certified food manager" with a permit through the city.